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A journal will help you and your doctor to keep track of uc symptoms to better guide disease management.

Masterfile

Quick: How did you feel when you woke up last Tuesday? Or after you ate breakfast? What were your weekend bathroom habits? If you’re like most people, life moves too fast to remember the details from day to day. But if you have ulcerative colitis, you know that those details are important.

It’s not the symptoms by themselves that you’ll want to take note of, says Jacqueline Wolf, MD, gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and author of A Woman’s Guide to a Healthy Stomach, it’s how those symptoms may be linked to what’s going on in your day. “So I’d want to know not just that you felt ill after a meal, but how long after a meal. Did a symptom just crop up suddenly?”

The symptoms of digestive disorders, which include abdominal pain and diarrhea, can be difficult to differentiate from other ailments, such as a food allergy or food poisoning, says Dr. Wolf. Telling your doctor you suffer from diarrhea is important, but so is when you had it, its intensity, frequency, and duration, and what exactly you ate before a bout. Your gastroenterologist can use your notes to help rule out other illnesses, pinpoint your diagnosis, and fine-tune your treatment.

What to Track in an Ulcerative Colitis Journal

Any time a colitis symptom strikes, note it in your journal. Symptoms you should include are:

Pain

Diarrhea

Fatigue

Fever

Bloody stools

Loss of appetite

Then get into a bit more detail, adding info such as:

Intensity How mild or severe was your pain, for example? A simple 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being minor and 10 being severe, works well.

Date and Time What time did you notice the symptom? How long did it last? How long after eating did it occur?

Descriptive Details You should include any extra information that can help explain the symptoms you experience in more detail. For example, was the pain on the left or right side of your abdomen? Was it sharp or dull?

You should also add in information about your dietary habits and choices, lifestyle, and what’s going on in your life that might impact the condition or cause flare-ups. For example:

What You Eat Your diet obviously plays a major role in how you feel day to day. Your body may not tolerate certain foods as well as others, leading to discomfort. Keeping track of what you eat, how much, when, and how you felt in the hours afterward can help you pinpoint offending foods or other issues that cause problems.

Medication You Take A new or worsening symptom could be the side effect of a medication you’re taking. To try to tease out that info, track what you take, the dosage, and the timing of your meds.

Your Exercise Habits Is your daily post-lunch walk helping you manage your symptoms, or do you sometimes feel worse afterward? Write down what kind of workouts you do and how you usually feel afterward.

Your Stress Level Was a flare-up in your symptoms triggered by stress? You may think so, but noting what you were doing in the hours before symptoms cropped up (stressful meeting? Argument with a loved one?) can help.

There’s no one right way to do or to use symptom-tracking exercises, but you may find that once you do it for a while, you’ll see patterns emerge that can help you lessen flare-ups.

Reviewing your journal — by yourself or with your doctor or nutritionist — is also a useful way to remember what works and what doesn’t. There’s no magic formula.

Tracking Tools

How you track your symptoms is less important than actually doing it, so the best option is the one you’ll actually use. Whether that’s a notebook and pen, a calendar, or an app on your phone, choose what feels intuitive for you. If you’re into apps, here are some options to try:

GI Buddy is a free tracker from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America that allows you to log symptoms, meals — or if you skipped a meal — and how each choice made you feel, on your phone or computer. It also allows you to email notes to your doctor straight from the app.

GI Monitor is a basic but easy-to-use symptom-logging app tailored for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s, and ulcerative colitis. You can choose to log certain stats your doctor may ask for, like your weight or your meds, and print reports to bring to office visits.

MyIBD was created by the Hospital for Sick Children. The “track” function does what you’d expect, allowing you to track symptoms, meals, moods, and more. The “chart” function gives you a view of your entries over time, so you can see a bigger picture of how you’re managing your condition.

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